Happy Birthday America

Tonight we grilled hamburgers. As I write, in the park near my house, they are setting off bottle rockets. Later I will drink American beer and read Ernest Hemingway, before bed.

My daughter is Irish, Italian, Polish, Welsh, Scottish, Belgian, and English. I would be equally proud if she had some Native or African American "blood" - but isn't blood an antiquated notion, 231 years into this grand experiment? The very definition of America is to create oneself and ones progeny anew, on our quirky but mostly-flat playing field. And all of it is our heritage anyway, the story of colonials, slaves, the original inhabitants, heirs to the Enlightenment, and generation after generation of more recent arrivals - from every nation, every creed, unified (mostly) by gritty American optimism.

So anyway, happy Independence Day.

God bless the troops overseas. God bless the men and women charged with our protection. God bless every piss-ant Green dissenter who rails against capitalism while enjoying the fruits of it's innovative munificence. God bless the Democrats and Republicans, and our noble, brilliant Constitution - not as elastic as some would claim, but rugged nonetheless. God bless each of the fifty states, the judiciary, all of those horrible bastards in Congress - even the president.

We're a country of Miles Davis, Milton Friedman, Johnny Carson, and Jackie Robinson. The French may adore Tom Waits, Johnny Depp, and Henry Miller - but never in a thousand years could such unmistakably American characters be forged in any other country. Spike Lee, Spike Jonze, Bugs Bunny, Jeff Tweedy, Ella Fitzgerald, Nate Hawthorne, even Barbra goddamn Streisand. Lewis and Clark, Simon and Garfunkel, Laurel and Hardy, Seals and Crofts, R2D2 and C3P0, Sanford and Son, Homer and Marge, Ike and Tina, Tracy and Hepburn, Mom and Apple Pie.

We're all that, and more, and always becoming. This is a good country, something to be proud of - a unique thing in history.

Happy Birthday America.